The woman in the silver SUV laid on her horn. And closed in on the bumper of the guy in front of her.
She was exasperated by his not-one-mph-above-the-speed-limit pace.
As they approached the next intersection, the light turned yellow. Instead of accelerating, the guy in front hit his brakes. The woman pulled onto the shoulder, absolutely committed to getting past this snail. “Idiot!” she yelled as she raced through the red.
Within seconds she saw the flashing lights of the state trooper’s car in her rear view mirror. She pulled over.
“Please get out of the car, ma’am,” he said. “Don’t make any sudden moves, and put your hands where I can see them.”
She was trembling now. “Officer,” she said, “what’s happening?” “You’re under arrest,” he replied. “For running a red light?”
“Well,” he said, “after seeing your Honk If You Love Jesus, Follow Me to Sunday School, and Jesus is My Life Savior bumper stickers, and watching your behavior in traffic, it seems pretty obvious you stole this car.”
No, that didn’t really happen.
But you can be certain that on a daily basis plenty of people are shocked by the Grand Canyon-sized gap between what followers of Jesus say and how they actually live.
In his book When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, John Ortberg writes: “The world gets pretty tired of people who have Christian bumper stickers on their cars, Christian fish signs on their trunks, Christian books on their shelves, Christian stations on their radios, Christian jewelry around their necks, Christian videos for their kids, and Christian magazines for their coffee tables but don’t actually have the life of Jesus in their bones or the love of Jesus in their hearts.”
The world has never been in greater need of people whose lives reflect the Savior they claim to follow.
By God’s grace, let’s make sure we aren’t arrested for false advertising.